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Across the region, power struggles mask a more fundamental divide over the meaning of the modern nation-state.

A man atttends a 2012 protest in Tahrir Square. (Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)

After the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, a debate raged among Egyptians and Tunisians over the very nature of their societies. How much of the ongoing Islamization was imposed and manufactured, and how much of it was an authentic representation of society? Without the stifling yoke of dictatorship, some reasoned, Arabs would finally be able to express their true sentiments without fear of persecution.

The ensuingand increasingly chargeddebate over the role of religion in public life put Western analysts and policymakers in the uncomfortable position of having to prioritize some values they hold dear over others. In the Western experience, democracy and liberalism usually went hand in hand, to the extent that democracy in popular usage became shorthand for liberal democracy. Liberalism preceded democracy, allowing the latter to flourish. As the political scientists Richard Rose and Doh Chull Shin point out, Countries in the first wave [of democracy], such as Britain and Sweden, initially became modern states, establishing the rule of law, institutions of civil society, and horizontal accountability to aristocratic parliaments. Democratization followed in Britain as the government became accountable to members of parliament elected by a franchise that gradually broadened until universal suffrage was achieved. In contrast, they write, third-wave democracies have begun democratization backwards.

Getting democracy backwards has led to the rise of illiberal democracies, a distinctly modern creation that Fareed Zakaria documents in his book The Future of Freedom. Zakaria seeks to disentangle liberalism and democracy, arguing that democratization is, in fact, directly related to illiberalism. On the other hand, constitutional liberalism, as he terms it, is a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. This bundle of freedoms, he goes on, has nothing intrinsically to do with democracy.

Michael Signer makes a similar argument in his book charting the rise of demagogues, who accumulate popularity and power through the ballot box. Like Zakaria, Signer acknowledges the inherent tensions between liberalism and democracy, noting that early generations of Americans were particularly attuned to these threats. He writes, for instance, about Elbridge Gerry, a representative from Massachusetts who declared that allowing ordinary Americans to vote for the president was madness. Drawing on such examples, Signer argues that at its simplest level, democracy is a political system that grants power based on what large groups of people want. And what these large groups want may not be good for constitutional liberalism, which is more about the ends of democracy rather than the means.

The emergence of illiberal democracy in the developing world saw democratically elected leaders using popular mandates to infringe upon basic liberties. Elections were still largely free and fair, and opposition parties were fractious but viable. But ruling parties, seeing their opponents more as enemies than competitors, sought to restrict media freedoms and pack state bureaucracies with loyalists. They used their control of the democratic process to rig the system to their advantage. In some cases, as in Venezuela under Hugo Chvez, a cult of personality became central to the consolidation of illiberal democracy. Sometimes it bordered on self-parody, taking the form of highway billboards announcing that Chvez is the people.

Illiberal democracy has risen to prominence in part because Western Europes careful sequencing of liberalism first and democracy later is no longer tenableand hasnt been for some time. Knowing that democracy, or something resembling it, is within reach, citizens have no interest in waiting indefinitely for something their leaders say they arent ready for. Democracy has become such an uncontested, normative good that the arguments of Zakaria seem decidedly out of step with the times. Zakaria argues, for instance, that the absence of free and fair elections should be viewed as one flaw, not the definition of tyranny. It is important that governments be judged by yardsticks related to constitutional liberalism. Interestingly, he points to countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Jordan, and Morocco as models. Despite the limited political choice they offer, he writes, [they] provide a better environment for life, liberty, and happiness of citizens than do the illiberal democracies of Venezuela, Russia, or Ghana.

The phenomenon of Islamists seeking, or being in, power forces us to rethink the relationship between liberalism and democracy. Illiberal democracy under Islamist rule is different from the Venezuelan or Russian varieties for a number of reasons. In the latter cases, illiberal democracy is not intrinsically linked to the respective ideologies of Hugo Chvez or Vladimir Putin. Their illiberalism is largely a byproduct of a more basic, naked desire to consolidate power. In the case of Islamists, however, their illiberalism is a product of their Islamism, particularly in the social arena. For Islamists, illiberal democracy is not an unfortunate fact of life but something to believe in and aspire to. Although they may struggle to define what exactly it entails, Islamist parties have a distinctive intellectual and ideological project. This is why they are Islamist.

See more here:
The Future of Democracy in the Middle East: Islamist and Illiberal